Industrial systems are designed to capture real-world instrumentation (e.g., sensor) data and actuate responses in real time, while operating reliably and safely. The physical environment for use of such industrial systems may be harsh, and encounter wide variations in temperature, vibration, and moisture. Small changes to system design may be difficult to implement, as many statically configured I/O and subsystems lack the flexibility to be updated within an industrial system without a full unit shutdown. Over time, the incremental changes required to properly operate an industrial system may become overly complex and result in significant management complexity. Additionally, many industrial control systems encounter costly operational and capital expenses, and many control systems are not architecturally structured to take advantage of the latest information technology advancements.
The development of Internet of Things (IoT) technology along with software-defined technologies (such as virtualization) has led to technical advances in many forms of telecom, enterprise and cloud systems. Technical advances in real-time virtualization, high availability, security, software-defined systems, and networking have provided improvements in such systems. However, IoT devices may be physically heterogeneous and their software may also be heterogeneous (or may grow increasingly heterogeneous over time), making such devices complex to manage.
Limited approaches have been investigated to utilize IoT devices and IoT frameworks even despite the technical advances that have occurred in industrial automation and systems. Further, industry has been hesitant to adopt new technologies in industrial systems and automation, because of the high cost and unproven reliability of new technology. This reluctance means that typically, only incremental changes are attempted; and even then, there are numerous examples of new technology that underperformed or took long periods of time to bring online. As a result, wide-scale deployment of IoT technology and software-defined technologies has not been successfully adapted to industrial settings.